Leanganook Track
Castlemaine and Bendigo
58km walk between Castlemaine and Bendigo.
Passes Through:
- Castlemaine
- Chewton
- Expedition Pass
- Mt Alexander
- Bendigo
Useful Links:
Purchase Maps:
Site sponsored by City of Ballarat
Developed by Knowers Ark
Bendigo Goldfields Walk
Sandhurst Reservoir - Bendigo 11km
This walk goes from the forested hills above Bendigo via the southern Bendigo suburbs to the Bendigo Railway Station. The mining wealth of this striking central Victorian city was primarily won in the hundreds of kilometres of shafts and tunnels now under the imposing civic buildings, broad streets, parklands and suburbs of the present-day city of Bendigo. Between the reservoir and Bendigo, the walk passes through a regrowth box-ironbark forest, originally devastated by mining and recently included in a a series of national parks to conserve this endangered forest type.
The remains of many dozen mines are evident on Diamond Hill: from mullock heaps to sluiced gullies, from building and stamp battery foundations to mine shafts and bedrock exposed by the stripping of soil. At Diamond Hill, the track links into the separate Bendigo Bushland Trail, which circles the city. The walk comes close to the Swan Decline, a new tunnel targeting gold bearing reefs 600m below the surface. It also passes through the Salomon Gully Flora Reserve that features excellent examples of box-ironbark heathland before coming to an end at Bendigo Railway Station, the northernmost terminus of the Great Dividing Trail.
The entry station can be located in Bendigo.